


The Letter

by Savageandwise



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, M/M, McLennon, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Outside Observer, Tumblr Prompt, Work of fiction, not my take on reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 15:53:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13438140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: Jim McCartney reflects on his son's relationship with John Lennon in the aftermath of the break up of The Beatles





	The Letter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blossom10060](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blossom10060/gifts).



> This story was written for Emma (@swaying-daisies, @blossom10060) who prompted me to write something about Jim being suspicious of John and Paul's relationship. I originally posted it on tumblr but I find ao3 is the better medium for fic. So I'm reposting some of my prompts.

“If I were you, son, I wouldn’t get involved in all this.”

That’s what he told that journo who showed up to deliver John’s letter. Typical Lennon. Getting some poor kid to do his dirty work. Jim had known what sort he was from the get-go. He’d warned his son, too. But Paul had a blind-spot the size of Australia where Lennon was involved. 

When it all started out Jim thought that was just Paul’s way of rebelling. Of working his way through his grief after Mary passed.  Paul spent all his time practicing guitar, with that steadfast, obsessive, pig-headedness he’d gotten from Mary’s side of the family. He looked different too. He’d lost weight, wore those tight trousers they called “drainies”, he styled his hair with grease, full on the top, slicked back on the sides. 

“You mind your school work, son. You study hard and do something worth-while with your life.”

Paul was a good boy, he had no doubt he’d see reason. And then he came round, that John Lennon. And it all made sense.   

He was the son of one Alf Lennon and Julia Stanley. The red-headed Stanley girl was a beauty for sure, but more trouble than she was worth. She might have married that Lennon bloke but she lived with some other man and had two children with him. It wasn’t just John’s clothing, the smoking or dubious manners that made Jim uneasy, it was the way he would look at Paul. He looked at Paul like he was starving.  Jim wasn’t quite sure how to address the matter. To address it would mean looking it in the eye. Admitting to himself that there was nothing normal about the way Paul would fidget and blush whenever he mentioned John. 

Jim put his foot down: John wasn’t to set foot in the house. He may as well have given him the key to the front door. Paul grew crafty, devising ways to spend time with Lennon.  He could now lie without batting an eyelash, he cut class whenever he could manage and spent it god-knows-where. He let John in through the bathroom window and into his bedroom, where they would whisper long into the night. Early in the morning Jim would watch the Lennon kid sprinting back towards Menlove Avenue with his tousled hair and rumpled clothes. 

It was for the music. Paul had gotten it into his head they were going to be songwriters. Lennon-McCartney. Another Lennon-McCartney original. That’s all it was. All it was? It was bad enough. Paul’s grades suffered. Jim went through his school bag and found a handful of notes he couldn’t decipher in John’s sloppy hand, complete with sketches of naked women with cartoonish bosoms. Paul sketched, too, in his notebooks. He practiced writing his signature, he drew hearts and curlicues and he wrote over and over. Over and over he wrote: John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon.

And then John’s mother died. And for one horrible moment Jim dared to hope it was over. God forgive him. He waited with bated breath while John stayed away and Paul became despondent. He hoped that Paul would realise what sort of boy his friend was, what sort of man. Weak, fearful, unnatural. The kind to lead a boy astray, a boy like his Paul, so full of promise and ambition. John found his way back to Paul, like one of those homing birds. And their bond was stronger than ever. Because now they had this loss in common. This terrible loss.

When Paul begged him to let him go to Germany what could he say? No? And break his boy’s heart? He watched them make their plans through a crack in the door to Paul’s tiny bedroom; saw their animated, joyful faces. He saw how Paul looked at this man. Saw Paul’s hand on John’s arm, the way his fingers curled against his skin possessively. Jim felt his mind close off in fear.

Paul wrote home when he could. Wrote of their performances, what they ate, what it looked like there. He wrote that he would rather be home. Jim wondered what had happened in Hamburg to make Paul sound so forlorn. That art school friend of John’s: Stuart Sutcliffe, with his bad bass playing? They left Stuart in Hamburg; he’d lost his heart to a German girl. When Jim saw Paul’s self-satisfied smile he knew he’d been right. 

Then like a dream, like a dream come true, they made it big. And they were everywhere. The Beatles. The Beatles! And Lennon-McCartney. It was just as Paul had always said it would be. John got married and had a kid and Jim allowed himself to breathe easy again. Except he couldn’t because everywhere he looked there they were: In the papers, on the telly. Gazing at each other while millions looked on. It was that programme, The Music of Lennon-McCartney that did it. Jim had to switch it off he couldn’t watch anymore. Paul called the next day and asked if he’d seen it, wasn’t it marvellous? All Jim could think was, yes, he’d seen it. And he now understood what it was he was looking at: they were in love. That’s what this was. He didn’t even feel angry, he just felt sad. He felt sad for his boy. He even felt sad for Lennon. Jim knew when it ended, as it inevitably had to, Paul would be just fine but John, John would die. 

Jim misjudged him. He didn’t die. What John did was burn down the world. He married that Japanese bit, that so-called artist and discarded his English wife and child. But even worse, he broke Paul’s heart. 

“It’s a drag.” That’s what Paul said when he asked him about it. 

And then he told him all about his solo projects and his new family and how excited he was to start his future. Jim recognised the look on his face, that puffy, glassy- eyed look. When he grew a beard Jim realised what it was he was looking at:  Paul was in mourning. 

He was his father. If some girl hurt him what would he tell him? “You’ll get over it, son. Plenty other fish in the sea.  Best way to get over one woman is to climb on top of another one.”

What could he possibly say about this? How could anything he said be enough? 

Paul rebuilt himself slowly but surely. He moved on. But Jim saw that melancholy in him. The melancholy he himself had been unable to shake since Mary died. Paul sounded the same, eventually he looked like himself again. But there was something missing. He never smiled the way he’d smiled with John Lennon.

Jim thought about tearing the letter up, tossing it into the furnace. He thought about keeping it from Paul the way he’d once kept John’s postcards from the boy. But in the end he walked into the kitchen and handed the letter to Paul.  When Paul saw the writing on the envelope, his whole body seemed to react. On his face was an expression of such fierce hope that it took Jim’s breath away. Paul tore the letter open with his fingernails and read it standing up, holding the paper almost to his nose as if he were trying to catch John’s scent on it. When he was done he folded it carefully, closed his eyes and breathed out. 

“He wants to make peace,” Paul said. He sounded relieved.

It was the hope in Paul’s face that did him in. That light in his eyes, that look of anticipation bordering on lunacy. Jim put a hand on Paul’s arm gently. 

“Go easy, son,” he said. 

Jim knew there was no point trying to warn him, he hadn’t listened the first time.


End file.
